


take the pictures down from the walls

by rarmaster



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied abuse, Namine deserves better but unfortunately canon isn't giving it to her, and in some ways her wasted potential but tbh it's not that deep, it's just musings about a very sad girl, unfortunately this does not have a happy ending, word vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: She was born of three hearts, of three people with a passion to help, so it’s really no wonder the fire that burns in her. A penance, she calls it. In reality, it’s always been a part of her. The desire to help, and somehow, miraculously, the power to do so.A Namine character study.
Kudos: 14





	take the pictures down from the walls

**Author's Note:**

> this prose is a few years old, but some bits of it are very good, so i salvaged what i could, even though i'm not entirely sure where i intended to go with the fic as a whole, or the exact scope of it. it... probably was drafted not long after the KH Orchestra converastion between Namine and Terra though lmao, which explains those bits towards the end

Namine wakes up with a sadness bursting in her chest, a sadness she does not yet understand, because it will be a year before she realizes the position she’s in, the fact that she somehow, somehow, sits at the center of a web and can feel the grief and sadness that sits at every end of it.

( _It’s because of Sora, because she was born from Sora—born from his heart and two others. It’s because Sora also sits at the center of a web, a web of connections and bonds, a web he spins larger and larger with every friend he makes, every person he meets. His is a web of friendships and smiles while, for a long time, hers is a web of memories and lies. She learns to tread on a new web, though. She learns to walk on connections Sora has made and learns to reach people he cannot reach, not yet, not yet. If she could save them, she would, but it has to be him. It has to be him._ )

She was born of three hearts, of three people with a passion to help, so it’s really no wonder the fire that burns in her. A penance, she calls it. In reality, it’s always been a part of her. The desire to help, and somehow, miraculously, the power to do so.

She wakes up for the first time ever in her life in a throne room, before a boy she thinks she recognizes, but she doesn’t, not yet, not quite. ( _It will take a while before she learns the web of connections she can touch, and even longer before she finds him on it._ ) She tries to wake him, but he does not stir, and that makes her sad, unbearably sad.

( _When they tell her Nobodies aren’t supposed to feel, all she does is laugh at the absurdity of it. But she learns to shut up and pretend she can’t, because that’s what they expect of her. She still feels, though. She feels so much she’s sure she’ll explode with it._ )

She sits and talks to the boy for a while, getting used to her voice, getting used to _being_.

Namine is a name she chose for herself. A name chosen because she liked the sound of it, the sound of the waves, familiar and pressed into her mind. She thinks the boy approves, though he continues to sleep. She thinks the other two hearts that made her approve, too.

She leaves the boy to explore the rest of the place she woke up in, though that turns out to be a mistake. She finds nothing but cold, white walls, and no matter how hard she tries, she can never find the boy again.

She tried, of course. When she still had the courage, before Larxene got tired of tracking her down and refused to let her leave, she tried. She wandered the castle, hoping each time she opened a door she’d see his throne, hoping that it was possible to just wander back to the room again, find it on accident. It wasn’t.

( _Later, when she knows the boy’s name is Ventus, when Axel tells her he’d been looking for some room on the Superior’s—Terra’s— **Xehanort’s** —orders, she realizes perhaps maybe it was for the best that she could never find the room again._)

She was born a bright-eyed girl filled with wonder, even if she was born with a sadness—a weight—in her chest that could not be fathomed, that belonged to so many people but not her. By the time she finally meets Sora, meets one of the three responsible for her existence, her wonder is gone, and her eyes are no longer bright. They are sad, they are tired, they are heavy. The Organization is not kind, would never be kind, to the children that stumble into its ranks. Marluxia had taught her to listen, to do as told. Larxene had taught her to be quiet, to not argue, to never step out of line. They taught her that she shouldn’t exist. She learned to believe them.

( _And she learned not to argue, when DiZ says the same, treats her the same. The feel of his hand on her cheek hurt, but it is nothing, nothing compared to fire and agony flowing through her veins, nothing compared to Larxene’s sneer and the way lightning danced across her fingertips when she was in a foul mood._ )

When she finally learns Ventus’s name, drags his memories out of the back of Sora’s heart (and her own), pins him down on the web of connections Sora had spun and she could see every inch of—she wants to help him. But she knows she can’t find him, and knows that even if she could there is no way for her to help.

But there are other people. Ven’s friends, both trapped and suffering. Namine has free time on her hands—this is after Xion had siphoned off Sora’s memories, at the point where all there was left to do was give Xion a choice and hope for the best. Namine has plenty of time to fill sketchbook pages with blue hair and darkness, darkness, darkness.

It takes her a while to pin down where, exactly, Aqua is. It takes her longer to realize she can reach Aqua. Well, that she can reach Aqua, physically, she can project her consciousness to where Aqua is. But she can’t _reach_ Aqua. She can’t _help_ Aqua. When Aqua heard her, she thought she was a ghost, a phantom, a figment of her imagination. Ten years of wandering through darkness—much, much too long—had whittled away at Aqua’s heart. Nothing Namine said would convince Aqua that she was real, that she was trying to help. (And, Namine thinks, Aqua hadn’t really, _exactly_ been able to hear her anyway. Just fragments.)

All that is left to do, then, is go to Terra.

She cannot help him—not while Xemnas is still what he is, and perhaps not at all, when it comes down to it. But she can visit the lingering, empty hull of armor that sits in a dusty desert, and she can ask him to help her.

“It’s your friend,” she tells him. “Aqua. She’s lost, in the dark, and she needs a light but- I can’t reach her. So I need your help.”

He is quick to agree, of course, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Aqua would remain in the dark. Terra would remain trapped. And Ven would remain hidden in that castle—the one Namine couldn’t think about setting foot in again without shivers going down her spine. She aches for the time when those bright, early moments in the throne room chatting to Ven were the only memories she had.

Xion makes her choice. Roxas does what he has to. Namine picks up the pieces, keeping her head down, as Riku falls away and DiZ gets more and more impatient. This is her penance, Namine tells herself. Fixing what she had broken. Putting the pieces back where they belong. She wishes she could do more for Roxas, for herself, but it doesn’t matter, did it? They were never supposed to exist.

And everyone else? The people she couldn’t save, the people waiting for their hurt to be undone…?

There is nothing to do but leave it in Sora’s hands.


End file.
